Spirit Walker (20 page)

Chapter 20: Ananoi and Shape-Changing Woman

At the Okanjara camp, lightning cracked in the distance, and a young girl not more than three years old came out of her tent crying.

“Bad dreams are walking around! Bad dreams are walking!” she said, her eyes wide with fear. For some reason Tull could not imagine, the girl chose to come to him, crying for comfort, so he pulled her up on his lap and hugged her, and told her, “Do not worry. The bad dreams will soon go away.”

A moment later, the girl’s mother came, sat beside Tull, and took the girl.

“There are no bad dreams walking around, it is only the Okanjara and the Pwi walking,” the girl’s mother said. The child looked about in dismay, and because the shadows were deep around the tents, and greasy smoke of cooking meat obscured the camp, she was not inclined to believe that only men were walking around.

In order to comfort her, the mother pointed at the two great Frowning Idols and said, “Would you like to know why these stones frown?”

The little girl nodded, and the woman told a story Tull had never heard, the tale of Ananoi and Shape-Changing Woman:

Once, long ago, a Shape-Changing Woman was a widow and head of her tribe. All people thought her wise, and because she was wise, it added to her beauty.

However, she had an evil son, Xetxetcha, who used his shape-changing power to fool the animals and slay them against their will. Xetxetcha believed himself to be a great wrestler, for he could wrestle in any form—be it cave bear, sloth, or giant deer.

In this day, there lived a mammoth, named Vozha, who shook the mountains down to hills when he walked. Redwoods grew in the dirt on his back, yet they were shorter than his giant hairs. Even the fleas on his back were enormous and grew to the size of wolves. Only the sea was large enough to be his water hole, and when he sprayed water from his trunk, it rained on the far side of the world.

Now each fall, as the mammoths went into their mating frenzy, their eyes would glaze and turn red. The bulls shook the mountains as they charged one another, butting heads, and their trumpeting could be heard to the ends of the earth. But none could withstand Vozha, for he picked up the other mammoths two and three at a time with his enormous trunk and he threw them over his back, and he alone mated with all of the dainty mammoth women.

So, one day, the mammoths came to Shape-Changing Woman and asked her advice, saying, “Zhofwa has blown her kisses to us, and we love the beautiful cow mammoths, but we never get to sleep with our sweet lovers. How can we defeat this monster?”

Shape-Changing Woman sat and thought upon it, for it was a tricky question, so she told the mammoths to wait for a month while she considered the answer.

But when her son, Xetxetcha, heard of the question, he thought,
Aha, now I have found a wrestling opponent worthy of me,
and he immediately turned himself into a giant mammoth and trotted off to the north.

Meanwhile, Ananoi, that great hero who destroyed Bashevgo and put the red drones in heaven so the Pirate Lords would not escape this world, also had some mammoths come to him and complain saying, “Vozha has taken all the sweet women mammoths as lovers, and though he is a mighty fighter, this is not right.”

So Ananoi decided to go speak with this monster. Everyone knew that Ananoi was the mightiest of the Okanjara, and he did not want to frighten the monster into submission, yet he knew he needed a weapon, so he took a cattail reed as a spear, and he carved petals of a lily to be the spear tip, and with that as his only weapon, he set off north.

Ananoi had not come far when he met a giant mammoth, taller than the mountains around it. The mammoth did not have redwoods growing upon its back, but in all other respects it looked like Vozha, and at the moment it was tossing several other mammoths over its back with its enormous trunk while trumpeting its challenge to all comers.

Ananoi saw the mammoth, and shouted, “Vozha, word of your terrible deeds has flown everywhere. Surely all the tribes of animals fear you. People say that even Adjonai, the God of Terror, cowers at your name. No one disputes your greatness, so why do you continue to be cruel? It serves no point.”

Now in saying this, Ananoi was not wise. Had he paid attention, he would have seen that this giant mammoth was not Vozha, but was in fact the Shape Changer Xetxetcha, for even though Xetxetcha was in giant form, he had not been in that form long enough for redwoods to have grown upon his back. Still, it may be that Ananoi saw the giant hairs on Xetxetcha’s back and only thought they were redwoods.

But Xetxetcha, realizing that he had fooled Ananoi, the great Okanjara warrior, thought,
Here is a man whose strength and wit are legend. Certainly we will have a great fight.

So he said, “Who do you think you are, scrawny person, to talk to me in this way! Will you fight?”

But Ananoi shouted, “I must warn you, I have a spear!” And he shook his spear of cattails and lily petals at the giant.

Xetxetcha only laughed. He picked up a mountain with his trunk and prepared to drop it on Ananoi, but Ananoi hurled his spear with such speed that the reed caught fire and became a comet, and he threw with such precision that the comet burned cleanly into Xetxetcha’s heart, and the evil Shape-Changer fell dead to the ground and went back to his natural form.

When Ananoi saw that he had killed a Shape-Changer by accident, he was sad, for he did not want to make enemies. He took the dead boy and carried him here to the Idols, where Shape-Changing Woman had her throne. At that time, the Idols did not frown.

Ananoi laid Xetxetcha at Shape-Changing Woman’s feet, and when he looked up into her eyes, he saw that she was beautiful beyond all that he had ever heard. When she saw her dead son, Shape-Changing Woman’s face was full of sorrow, and it broke Ananoi's heart. Very softly, he told her how he had killed her son, and he begged forgiveness.

But Shape Changing Woman fell into a rage. “You have already taken my son, and now you want to take my forgiveness, too? I will have blood from you, not apologies!” Shape-Changing Woman raged, then she turned into a scimitar cat and leapt at Ananoi.

But Ananoi was not ready to die, so he cuffed her softly, not wishing to hurt her, and knocked her aside. Shape-Changing Woman immediately turned herself into a dragon, and leapt into the air and raked him with her horrible talons.

Ananoi was forced to run, and so magnificent was his speed that the dragon could not catch him. Beat her wings as she might, she could not catch him, so he ran until he reached the sea and could run no more. Shape-Changing Woman was close behind and he had nowhere to go, but he thought,
Ah, I have seen how the Shape-Changers perform their tricks. I can do that, too,
so he jumped into the ocean, and quick as a heartbeat he became a sea turtle.

The ocean has mountains and valleys beneath it and cities where water spirits dwell, but Ananoi, sick with grief, swam down, down, until he reached the bottom of the ocean. Meanwhile, Shape-Changing Woman searched everywhere. She had seen Ananoi jump into the water, but she had not seen him change into a turtle. She did not know that he knew her tricks, so she searched until she decided that some beautiful daughter of the water spirits had pulled Ananoi down, drowning him to make him her husband.

For a long time, Ananoi stayed on the bottom of the ocean and wept in grief. He was sick for having killed Xetxetcha, and he was even more sick that he could not have the beautiful Shape-Changing Woman for his wife. Often he thought of going to see the beautiful woman, but he knew the sadness upon her face would break his heart. So, he stayed on the ocean floor and wondered what to do for a long time, always drifting with the currents, sinking deeper and deeper into the lowest chasms.

After a year, the sound of drums disturbed Ananoi from his thoughts. He realized that he had heard these drums for a long time but only believed it to be the beating of his own heart. But now he knew the truth, for as he listened intently, he heard drums.

Also, he could hear singing, very faintly, horrible voices wailing like flutes and panpipes. He put his ear to the mud on the ocean floor, and sure enough, the singing and drums became louder. And with this, he realized what he heard—the singing of the soul worms of wicked people as they danced around the Heart of Evil at the center of the world.

Ananoi was finally stunned from his brooding thoughts, for mingled with the singing of the damned souls, he recognized the voice of Xetxetcha.

Ananoi immediately turned himself into a mole and dug into the ground, and he did not have to go far to reach the cavern where the Heart of Evil dwelt, and soon he tunneled into the roof of that great cavern.

The Heart of Evil lay on the cavern floor below him, black and throbbing. Foul emanations, black like smoke, drifted up from it to fill the world. Each beat of the heart rang through the cavern like the beating of a drum.

Evil men whose souls had shriveled into the shape of worms crawled endlessly in a great maddening circle, wailing the tales of their evil lives in song. Slave masters cracked endless whips, driving the worms over sharp rocks and broken glass. When Ananoi saw this, a plan came to mind.

For many hours Ananoi watched the soul worms in their dance of pain. They roiled beneath him, one by one, and at last he heard Xetxetcha and saw which worm it belonged to.

Ananoi jumped down, still in the form of a mole, and caught the soul worm between his teeth, then raced up through his tunnel before the slave masters could follow. Up, up he climbed, digging back to daylight. Ananoi burrowed up into the garden of Shape-Changing Woman. It was a summer’s night, and all three full moons lingered on the horizon.

Ananoi turned himself back into his own form as a beautiful man, set the soul worm on the ground, and let it sing. Xetxetcha sang of his torments in the cavern of evil, and these are the words he sang:

I am but fruit

to be eaten by Crows of Misfortune

that hover on jeering wing.

Their dark forms swarm above me

with reaping-hook frowns

as their purple tongues caw

caustic calls of derision.

I can leave no footprints as I flee

through the dust of this hard world.

But beneath the shadows of netherwhere,

where the heart only sees.

I bruise myself,

and find no comfort.

Shape-Changing Woman heard the mournful song and went to her garden. Ever since the death of her son, she, too, could find no comfort, and she wondered who sang of her own pain.

When she got to the garden, she saw a beautiful man in the moonlight and did not recognize Ananoi. But the spirit worm sang of all the evil deeds that had led it to such a terrible fate, and by the deeds sung in the song, Shape-Changing Woman recognized her own son.

Xetxetcha sang of the joy he had taken in tormenting animals and stealing their lives. He sang of his boastfulness and lust for blood. And finally he sang of his own death as he tried to murder Ananoi, and his mother wept at the deeds of her terrible son.

Then, when the song was done, the soul worm crawled back into the ground, seeking the Heart of Evil that would be its eternal tormentor, for it had no other choice. As the Idols heard Xetxetcha sing of his deeds and the grief that these evil deeds caused him, they both frowned, just as they do now.

Ananoi and Shape-Changing Woman were filled with sadness, and they stood for a long time in the moonlight, watching one another. “I killed your son,” Ananoi said, “but I brought what I could back to you. First his body, then his spirit. Can you forgive me?”

Shape-Changing Woman wept fiercely, and the wind rushed for a moment as the goddess Zhofwa knelt and blew her kisses upon the couple. “I forgive you,” Shape-Changing Woman said, and they fell in love and became man and wife.

Tull listened to the story with a certain reverie, wondering at it, for it was different in some ways from any that he had ever heard.

In Pwi stories, Ananoi was always named as a Pwi hero, not a Thrall or Okanjara, and the Thrall thought the red drones were sent to trap only the Slave Lords, whereas Tull knew that they were spaceships filled with alien machines that kept everyone caged on this world, and he smiled to think that they believed Ananoi had almost destroyed Bashevgo, instead of Phylomon.

Most of all, Tull was surprised to see that the Okanjara told stories about guilt and redemption. In form, this was a Pwi tale, even though these men bore little resemblance to the Pwi.

Tull felt a thrill of fear, and realized that if Tchupa was right, that within a year he might be fighting the armies of Craal beside these strange warriors in their skull masks. Suddenly Tull felt at peace with these men. He listened to them laugh and joke. No longer were they Okanjara, no longer were they so different.

A storm blew in, bringing first a boisterous wind and distant thunder, then a strong scent of water. The campfires guttered beneath the blast, and it began to rain.

Tull retreated into the tent where the young woman struggled to give birth, and two hours later the girl reached hard labor.

The baby was coming out breech and had its cord wrapped around it many times. Phylomon made Tull push the child back into the womb, turn it around so that it would come head first.

Tull hated the job. His hands felt so large and clumsy going into that small woman, and she screamed in pain.

“You take over,” Tull said. “She is too small for me to get. It’s these damned hands, these damned clumsy hands!”

“You are right,” Phylomon said, coaching him. “The girl is too small to deliver easily. But your hands are not too large. This would hurt her in any case. I could do no better.”

“You take over,” Tull said in disgust.

“You are doing fine. We don’t want my hands in there too—it would only heighten the risk of infection. Get on with it.”

Tull went back to the work. The cord was wrapped around the child’s shoulders and arms. With the cord cutting off the babe’s breathing, Tull knew he had to get the babe out quickly if it was to live.